The Piano: New show will open doors to classical music and undiscovered talents

If you've spotted - or even stopped to watch - a stranger tickling the ivories at a train station, you'll likely be aware of the growing "street piano" phenomenon. It refers to the practice in which a piano is placed in a public area, with the sole aim of encouraging passers-by to stop and play for free - a trend that has become so popular in recent years that the brains behind The Great British Bake Off (Love Productions) has tapped it up for its latest show.

The Piano, set to air on Channel 4, hosted by Claudia Winkleman, invites talented amateur pianists to play on pianos across the UK, sharing their stories and music with the great British public. What the budding musicians don't know is that two of the most acclaimed and successful performers in the world - Lang Lang, who is widely regarded as the greatest classical pianist of the modern era, and Mika, the platinum selling pop superstar - will be secretly watching.

Far from the "documentary" they're being sold, the performers have been taking part in a secret competition, with the best contestants chosen to perform in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. It's a nationwide search that Winkleman and her two co-stars were only too happy to lead.

"I love Love Productions - I think everything they make is brilliant," says 51-year-old Winkleman of the production company which is also responsible for The Great Pottery Throw Down and The Great British Sewing Bee.

"We had a chat in 2019 before Covid, and Richard [McKerrow, co-founder and creative director of Love Productions], said: 'Do you like the idea of people playing, but they're not on a pedestal, there aren't big lights, there isn't a ta-da moment. It's just very authentic, small and we'll see how it goes?' But then he said, 'We've got Mika and Lang Lang'. I was like, 'I'm on a train to Glasgow, or wherever you need me!'"

Mika was called in at an early stage, when the premise was simply "An idea, a desire, a question", he says. "And the question was, 'What is the piano today?' So let's find out what amateur pianists are doing. Why are they playing on these pianos? Why is this becoming a thing? Let's tell their stories.

"Me and Lang Lang didn't even know each other; we met in front of the camera and everything you see just happened naturally," recalls the Lebanese-born artist, 39, who was last seen co-hosting Eurovision. "It was a privilege to be allowed into that process. I loved the purity and the realness of it."

"I just love this format," adds Chinese classical virtuoso Lang Lang, 40. "This has never happened in the classical piano world, so this will open doors for audiences and for musicians to believe music is not only for themselves, but for everyone in the community. Music brings us closer as human beings."

The five-part series was filmed at four mainline stations across the UK - London's St Pancras, Leeds, Glasgow Central and Birmingham New Street - with 20 amateur pianists performing at each.

So who can we expect to meet on the keys?

"We met so many different people. I think our youngest was nine and our eldest was 94," Winkleman shares. "I'd say the vast majority don't have pianos at home, so these were people who'd played on street pianos or who had learned during lockdown.

"There's a boy called Jared, who I became obsessed by," she continues. "We met him quite early on at St Pancras. He was a truck mechanic. 21. He literally had his toolbox and a grease-covered baguette - he won't mind me saying that - and he put them down and played Honky Tonk. Well, my head exploded! We met every different kind of person - some playing their own compositions, some playing Chopin, some playing the Goo Goo Dolls."

"It was so diverse," Mika concurs. "But these people weren't coming for a competition, they weren't coming for 15 minutes of fame, they were coming as their true selves, because that's how it was framed.

"When you have a girl who has trouble talking, who has many disabilities, many health issues, who is blind, she's never been able to read music, and she sits down and plays Schubert... and everyone just stops," he muses. “You sit there thinking, 'There's something special'. It's not just that this person's story deserves to be told, but it's that it needs to be told, and we need to hear those stories."

As for those who went on to perform at the Royal Festival Hall, there was a "period of adjustment", remembers Mika, who, alongside Lang Lang, offered the chosen few coaching and guidance.

"We just wanted them to really be themselves, the same people that we discovered in the station," reasons the Grace Kelly hitmaker. "And there was this moment of tilt in that coaching day, when they realised that they were allowed to express themselves and that what they had to say was important."

He pinpoints a moment when a male performer asked him, 'Do you mean you care? I never thought anyone would care.'

"The fact that just through something like the piano in this experiment, just one person felt empowered and just heard, was quite a transformative thing," he says, visibly emotional. "It made me look at the world around me differently. People have a lot to say, they just don't feel like they can say it."

"Lang Lang and Mika were so good with them," Winkleman says. "I don't know what the show will look like as I can't watch myself, but they treated it with aplomb. And because the whole thing isn't jazzed up, it's authentic.

"The amateurs had the two greatest performers on their side - the audience, everyone. It was a really moving and lovely combination."

"There was passion in their hearts," says Lang Lang, admitting he was moved by the reactions of the amateur pianists on learning they would play on one of the world's most prestigious stages.

"I still remember when I asked one, 'Are you ready?' And he said, 'I'm so ready. I've been waiting for this day my whole life'. We had a choir and a string quartet, so they had to learn how to communicate with other musicians," he adds. "It's the process of being a professional musician on stage, a real performer, and I think they did brilliantly. More than our expectation."

The Piano starts on Channel 4 on Wednesday February 15.